The romantic c.v. of Daniel 'Spike' Savage, old, sad and 'surprisingly na•ve', is a record of failed relationships. 'I've been struggling hopelessly for nearly 30 years to find love.' Now downwardly mobile, in the throes of a messy divorce and suffering the heartache of an exiled dad for his daughter, Poppy, Spike is back in the dating market via the personal ads. Only this time round, and with the help of a flip-chart and his therapist, he's determined to learn from his mistakes. The Love Secrets (alternative title Things I Must Learn In Order Not To Fuck Up Any More) are the results of his research into past passions. Each 'secret' is recorded in the form of a syllogism. For example:

Problem: Men try to crush what they see as weak.

Result: Lots of crushing.

Solution: Stop doing it. Avoid weak women.

As in Lott's first novel, White City Blue, the story line is pretty thin, but the construction is skilful. The flashbacks never impede the present action and the reader is kept going hoping against hope that Spike, so love- battered that he becomes a 'fallow fellow', will find True Love. (No, I won't tell). Again, as in White City Blue, Lott gives us an endearing narrator. Spike, like Frankie Blue, struggles against his own confusion, his inadequate nature.

Lott's spirits seem to have lifted since Rumours of a Hurricane, his second novel, set in the gloom of the Eighties. Although The Love Secrets is full of loss and angst, the tone is ever so cheery and as in the best of comic novels Lott delivers depth with lightness. It's a book packed with witty aperŒus that make you either pause and laugh, pause and consider your own love life, or both. Here's just a sample. On the first stages of love: 'We spend a lot of time in bed. We're still in our horizontal phase.' On love ending: 'She replaced her love for me É with need, love's poor crippled cousin.'

My favourite 'love secret' is encapsulated in Spike's fourth Problem - 'women symbolic, men literal'. To which the partial answer is 'Words don't mean what they mean anyway. But listen for clues.' Sound advice.

The Love Secrets of Don Juan is a book for every bedroom. Correction: every guest bedroom.

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